The story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness is so familiar to us it’s easy to take no notice of it. It happened. We hear about it every Lent. So what? Well maybe we can learn things about our own lives and priorities if we look at Jesus’ temptation in a little more depth. And…
3 before Lent The passage from Ecclesiasticus makes it sound so very easy – God hasn’t given us permission to sin, so we just shouldn’t – sin. Perhaps I should just stop here. Don’t sin. We can all go home. But we do sin, don’t we. All the time and in all sorts of ways…
There has always been a tendency in religions – including our own – to divide things up between good and evil, clean and unclean, acceptable and unacceptable. Very often this is to do with the body – the flesh and the soul – that which is physical and that which is spiritual. Deeply embedded within…
The Epiphany These past few days, all over the world, Christians will be celebrating the Feast of Epiphany and will hear this passage from Matthew’s Gospel – the story of wise men from the East travelling from far away to kneel before the Christ Child. In the Orthodox faith, this festival is of equal importance…
Our Gospel passage for today allows us space to consider prayer which seems to be simultaneously easy and extremely difficult. People often come to talk to me about their struggles with their spiritual life – prayer, belief, faith. I am always happy to help in these – and other matters. This is one of the…
Christianity is full of wonderful stories of service of the strangers. One concerns St Oswald who is very close to our hearts; it goes like this. One Easter, when St Aidan was dining with St Oswald, a servant entered to say that there were many poor outside the gate seeking alms, Oswald took up a…
I have a copy of a most remarkable book called ‘I you sit very still’ It’s by a woman called Marian Partington who’s sister Lucy disappeared one night on her way home. What had happened to Lucy remained a mystery for almost 20 years until her remains were found in the cellar of a house…
Each week I print out the readings for the week for you to follow and take home. This week I’ve added an explanatory sentence at the beginning of each lesson to give you more information about the background and history of the readings. Each week a sermon is preached on the readings for the week…
The Old Testament lesson today is a stirring, and in many ways, humorous story. Whenever we are called together to pray all together in one place, in large numbers, I always think of this story with the prophets beating their chests and banging their drums and making a dreadful din. I know they were addressing…